October 10, 2017

Contents

Patch Highlights

For a limited time, explore the haunted streets of Eichenwalde and Hollywood, expand your collection of spooky seasonal cosmetics, and team up to fight evil incarnate once more in not one, but two Junkenstein's Revenge-themed brawls! We're also re-opening our crypt so players can unlock their favorite Halloween-themed items from last year along with over 50 new tantalizing treats, including legendary skins like Corsair Ana, Van Helsing McCree, Dragon Symmetra, Cultist Zenytta, and more.

Through the power of science, Winston has traveled with his trusty jump pack from his base in Gibraltar all the way to Anaheim, California for BlizzCon 2017. We’ve given him a special souvenir to mark the curious occasion and he’d like to share it with you. Starting today, this new skin is available in-game for all BlizzCon Virtual Ticket holders—click here to learn more.

General Updates

Overwatch Halloween Terror Victory Pose Updates

We've made a few changes to this year's selection of seasonal victory poses. To learn more about this change, click here.

Hero Updates

General

Ultimate charge is now immediately expended when a hero's ultimate ability is activated, instead of depleting over a short period of time

Developer Comments: One of the most common pieces of feedback we receive revolves around the way Overwatch handles ultimate interruptions. Players often feel frustrated when they’re able to prevent an enemy from using an ultimate, only to see that same enemy use it again immediately after respawning

Until now, many ultimates drained the meter quickly over time, instead of instantly setting the meter to zero when the button was pressed. We originally designed it this way to ensure that players had the chance to use (at the very least) a little of their ultimate every time. However, we now feel that it causes too much frustration without adding many benefits.

With this patch, ultimate abilities will instantly set a hero’s meter to zero when the button is pressed, which means stopping an enemy ultimate at any point after it’s activated will ensure that it has been spent.

Another piece of feedback we often hear is that it’s difficult to understand which abilities are interruptible and which are not. For clarity, most of Overwatch’s ultimates fall into three basic categories:

Channeled Ultimates: These force your hero into a new mode and render your other abilities unusable while active. In most cases, these abilities can be interrupted at any point to cancel them. Ultimates in this category: Doomfist’s Meteor Strike, McCree's Deadeye, Pharah’s Barrage, Reaper’s Death Blossom, Roadhog’s Whole Hog, and Zenyatta's Transcendence (though, Zenyatta’s ultimate renders him immune to interruptions).

Most abilities fit neatly within these categories but we did make some changes to outliers such as Genji's Dragonblade and Orisa's Supercharger to make them more consistent. Additionally, any ultimate that can be interrupted by a stun (Channeled ultimates and Cast-Time ultimates) can now be interrupted by Sombra’s Hack as well. Overall these changes should make it much easier to understand the ultimate mechanics and how they interact in combat.

Developer Comments: See the above developer comment on ultimate interruptions

User Interface Updates

Assault Maps

When capturing an objective, the progress bar is now broken into three segments that will fill in with the team’s color that is capturing it (as each segment fills, it will trigger an animation and audio cue)

The number of defenders currently on the objective will now be displayed in addition to the number of attackers, just below the progress bar

Bug Fixes

General

Fixed a bug that allowed muted players to become unmuted after leaving and rejoining the same match

A.I.

Fixed a bug that caused bots to get trapped in a movement loop after taking the tunnel under the capture point in the University section of Oasis

Competitive Play

Fixed an issue that caused matches to end in a draw when both teams won their first attacking rounds in overtime on Hanamura, Horizon Lunar Colony, Temple of Anubis, and Volskaya Industries

Custom Games and Game Browser

Fixed a bug that prevented the Capture Speed Modifier setting from being applied in custom games

Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va’s Projectile Speed slider from appearing in Custom Game settings

Heroes

Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va’s Micro Missles from producing rumble feedback when using a controller with vibration enabled

Fixed a bug that caused Lúcio’s soccer ball to fly off in the wrong direction when activating his Juggle emote at 30 FPS